


to honeyed stone

by Pi (Rhea)



Category: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Geoscience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28142718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Pi
Summary: “We named this river,” Chihiro’s grandmother always says, when she finishes, “It’s been good to us so we come here every summer, just like when I was a girl, and I live here like my mother, and her grandmother, and her mother before me as far back as we can remember all the way back to that very farm with the chickens.”
Relationships: Haku | Nigihayami Kohakunushi/Ogino Chihiro
Comments: 26
Kudos: 132
Collections: Yuletide 2020, ùwú oh worm? then squirm.





	to honeyed stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Val_Creative](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/gifts).



> Title from Amber by Gillian Clarke. Full poem [here](https://poetryarchive.org/poem/amber/?fbclid=IwAR0TSup_zTEipdRttf4TZvVks2H0jVS96Uy05Y8jUwoSMryPFIzfHSlTjwA)

The year Chihiro almost drowns at the annual family picnic at the Kohaku River is nearly the same as every other year. The whole family gathers on the banks of the river for lunch as Chihiro’s grandmother says they’ve done since long before Chihiro was born. Her older cousins go off to play soccer and Chihiro and her younger cousins stay with her Grandmother listening to stories. 

Like every year, her grandmother tells Chihiro’s favorite story: how the river offered some ages-ago-grandparent the seemingly sunlit treasures it had held in its depths. Chihiro’s grandmother embellished the story with chicken clucking sounds and silly gestures. She tells them how the farm they bought with the amber from the river fed the first workers of the amber mine.

“We named this river,” Chihiro’s grandmother always says, when she finishes. “It’s been good to us so we come here every summer, just like when I was a girl. I live here like my mother, and her grandmother, and her mother before me, as far back as we can remember – all the way back to that very farm with the chickens.” She takes out her necklace and passes it to the younger cousins to examine and hold.

Chihiro is so careful when it’s her turn to hold it. Her grandmother says it’s the one piece of amber that great-great-however-many grandparent kept. It’s a lush and glossy almost-green color and Chihiro never says it but she does think it matches how the water shines so brightly in the warm summer sun.

Two unusual things happen the year Chihiro almost drowns. First, her oldest cousin finds a small piece of amber. Second, Chihiro almost drowns. Chihiro isn’t there to see her cousin find the amber because it happens at the same time that she’s wading in after the shoe she dropped and getting knocked off her feet, unable to find purchase on the slippery green boulders and rocks. It turns out there’s a reason that Chihiro’s family never lets any of the children swim in the river, with its powerful current and slick rocks.

It’s a miracle, Chihiro’s mother says later, that Chihiro was somehow brought safely to the far side of the river and just a little downstream. She’s cold and wet and kind of miserable, bundled in picnic blankets, everything so concrete after a feeling like flying, suspended in the strangeness of water around her, almost green like her grandmother’s amber. Chihiro’s oldest cousin presses the little piece of amber they found into her hands as her parents shuffle her into the car to be carted off to the hospital. Chihiro spends the car ride with her fingers clenched tight around the amber. It feels warm digging into her skin. It feels important, as miraculous as arriving safely to shore. A tiny piece of her very own, to carry the river that saved her, like her grandmother’s stories of the river’s gifts. When they get to the hospital, she shoves it deep into her clammy pocket so she can’t lose it.

They have to stay in the hospital waiting area for what seems like forever, but one of the nurses brings Chihiro hot tea and her mother keeps messing up Chihiro’s hair with a towel in an attempt to dry it. The doctor who sees her and listens to her lungs says she just needs to be warm and dry and she’ll be perfectly fine and sends them all home with Chihiro in shapeless hospital clothes and her own wet things squashed up in a plastic bag.

Chihiro doesn’t think of it until it's too late. When she goes through the pockets of her cleaned clothes, the amber is gone. She looks everywhere in the house and the car and all around the small distance between them. It’s no use. 

\--

Chihiro’s grandmother dies. When they visit for the funeral everything is covered in snow. They don’t go anywhere near the river. They never go back to the river after that. But even without the amber, without visits to the river when Chihiro loses her name and almost loses her parents, she never loses her memories of the Kohaku River. After all that, it feels like a puzzle piece slotting into place when she tells Haku his name. 

Leaving the bathhouse is surreal, like having a dream of drowning and flying and waking with wet hair and water beaded eyelashes. Her parents dust themselves off and move their lives along as if nothing has happened. They arrive at their new house. Chihiro’s mother sets straight away to unpacking, directing Chihiro as if their move has gone perfectly to plan.

Chihiro writes to Haku sometimes. She doesn’t know where to send the letters, so she tucks them in the drawer of her nightstand. They’re silly things, mostly: musings about her classmates, anecdotes of a small town, sketches of birds and rabbits and the flowers that bloom on the climbing vine that scales the trellis against the back of the house.

\--

Her senior year in high school Chihiro writes an essay on the topic of loss and tells the story of her family and her grandmother’s hometown. How Chihiro lost the piece of amber that was given to her and how in the town her grandmother knew as a child the river has been replaced by high rise buildings and the dried up amber mine by the corporate headquarters of a new technology company. The essay takes first place in a regional contest and Chihiro has to read it aloud before an entire auditorium. The bright stage lights wash the audience into blurry darkness, but she manages to pick out her parents in the crowd.

Her mother gives her a big hug afterwards. When she draws back her cheeks are damp from smeared-away tears. Chihiro has barely finished taking off her shoes back at home when her mother beckons her.

“Come with me, Chihiro,” she says.

She sits Chihiro on the bed as she pulls her jewelry box down from the closet.

“I’d forgotten all about this until hearing you read that essay today,” she says. “I found this when there was that leak just before we moved. This was back under the washer and I didn’t know where it came from, but it reminded me of your grandmother, so I kept it. We were so busy packing and I didn’t want to lose it, so I put it in with my jewlery.”

She opens her palm, offering out towards Chihiro. There in the center of her hand sits the piece of amber. It’s bigger than Chihiro remembered, but the same flecked orange-gold. Chihiro holds out her hands and her mother tips the gem into them. It’s warm where it hits her palm, smooth and comforting against her skin. Chihiro’s throat sticks and she has to try twice to find words.

“Thank you.”

Her mother smiles and runs a hand over her hair.

“You know, there's something else for you in here.” She goes back to shifting around the contents of the jewelry box. “I’m supposed to wait to give this to you when you graduate, but that’s only a few weeks now, so.”

Her mother holds a finger to her lips and winks. She draws out a familiar necklace and lays that too across Chihiro’s palm. The two stones look very similar when placed next to each other, but the stone in Chihiro’s grandmother’s necklace is green hued compared to the glowing orange of Chihiro’s stone. Chihiro closes her hands around both of them, drawing them close to her chest. It seems like she should be able to feel them beating too, pressed against her heart.

“Thank you.” The words come out wetly.

“Oh, Chihiro.” Her mother pulls her in close, so that Chihiro is awkwardly leaning sideways, half seated on the bed, half against her mother’s side. Chihiro’s mother’s sweater is soft and her hands are steady around Chihiro’s back. “I worried when you didn’t cry at her funeral.” Chihiro’s mother’s lips press softly against Chihiro’s hair. “But you feel things in your own time. I wanted to give this to you then, but she’d been very clear that it would be a graduation present.” They shift on the bed so it’s easier to tuck Chihiro in close. “Did you know, when you were very little you asked if you could have the necklace when she died? I tried to apologize for you, but my mother was laughing so hard she couldn't hear me. She laughed about it for days. Then as we were leaving she took you aside and promised you very solemnly you could have it. Your Dad had been out skiing when you’d asked so he didn’t understand why she started laughing about it, or why I was so embarrassed.”

Chihiro sniffles and leans back to see her mother’s face. They both wipe away tears.

“She loved you,” Chihiro’s mother says, offering Chihiro a tissue.

“Grandma loved both of us.” Chihiro blows her nose.

Chihiro’s mother frowns. “I hope so. We didn’t always get along so well.”

Chihiro sways a bit to knock shoulders with her mother. “But she was your mother.”

“Yes.” Chihiro’s mother smiles. “And I love you no matter what you do or where you go. Just, tell me first before you go too far away?” Her mother tucks a lock of hair behind Chihiro’s ear fondly.

“I’m going to be leaving for college soon.”

“Anywhere farther than that, I mean.”

Her mother pushes to a stand and brushes off her jeans lightly. The gesture closes something about the conversation, her posture going firmer. Chihiro wipes again at her nose with the tissue.

“Now, I was thinking that it would be good to put that second stone on a necklace, or maybe a bracelet, so you can’t lose it again.”

Chihiro leaves for college with an old necklace and a new bracelet. They feel like taking pieces of home with her. Chihiro takes the letters to Haku with her. 

\--

Chihiro moves into a dormitory where she has a small single room with her own tiny kitchen and adjacent bathroom. Chihiro quickly meets the other girls on her dorm floor. She borrows several cups of sugar for a mid-semester baking kick and shares the cookies and scones she creates with her neighbors. She buys her own supply of sugar and returns the amount she borrowed with interest. That leaves her with twice as much sugar as she thinks she might need for future baking needs, just in case. There’s a club for baking and pastry and Chihiro joins it. Chihiro also joins the environmental club and volunteers on all the trash pick up events and planting outings.

Chihiro goes home to visit her parents, but never stays for very long. She takes the required curriculum and self selected courses in paleobotany and hydrology and works her way into an internship with an environmental engineering and restoration organization. Her project is to assist with monitoring the bottom sediment of a local river, and its adjacent marshes and wetlands, for polychlorinated biphenyls and other persistent organic pollutants as part of an ongoing remediation project.

She gets permission to use the data she collects in her own paper comparing natural recovery with locations recovering with the addition of activated carbon. Chihiro hasn’t presented anything since the essay on her piece of amber in high school, but with encouragement from one of her professors, she submits the paper to the Geological Society of Japan. It is accepted for presentation at their next regional meeting. The week of the presentation, Chihiro makes sure her spider plant is watered, packs an overnight bag, and falls asleep on the train practicing what she will say.

As she blearily reviews the schedule and drinks vending machine coffee on the concrete wall outside the conference center, other women and men with nice suits and conference badges stream in and out of the double doors. Inside is a maze of posters, presentations, and special interest meetings. Chihiro circles a networking lunch for women in STEM on her schedule; then a presentation on ocean plastic circulation; a lecture on collection and curation of fossil samples in museums; a poster presentation on a review of river basin management in Korea; a briefing on king tides, resilience, and emergency management; and a presentation on using spectroscopy for estimating the age of amber.

The evening finds her with several business cards. The small stack of her own cards is completely depleted. Her pocket notebook is nearly full with observations, ideas, and recommended readings to follow up on. One of the women from the STEM event texts an invite to join for drinks and Chihiro politely declines. She’s exhausted, overwhelmed with information, and ready to slurp some noodles and stare at her phone in a corner undisturbed, if she can only find the restaurant her GPS is failing to point her to.

She walks around the same block twice and isn’t able to find it at all, even when standing in front where she’s pretty sure it’s supposed to be, so she circles the block a final time to the little izakaya that seems to be the only restaurant here. It’s oddly jammed between a barbershop and an all night pharmacy. Its narrow door leads to stairs going up to what is presumably a more spacious second floor. The window outside declares the best house special ramen and Chihiro’s stomach is too hungry to argue for trying to go any further afield.

Waiting at the hostess stand and she can see are several other patrons. They all look happy enough with their food. A minute or so of waiting brings a young woman with a stack of menus to greet her.

“Do you have a reservation?” she asks.

“No, I just saw the sign about the ramen,” Chihiro shrugs.

“Oh, the house special?” the woman asks, eyeing Chihiro up and down with her eyebrows raised, before she seems to see something that answers her unvoiced doubt and nods in understanding. Chihiro isn’t sure exactly what was so surprising about it and shrugs awkwardly.

“Wonderful. Well follow me then.”

The hostess leads Chihiro further back into the restaurant, past the main room with several available tables down what Chihiro would have assumed was a corridor to the restrooms or maybe the kitchen. The dim hallway takes several turns before they pass through a curtain and into another space. Chihiro blinks at the sudden change in light from the dim corridor.

“Here you go.” The hostess stops at a table between two tall, presumably potted, trees. “Your server will be with you in a moment.” She hands Chihiro her menu.

The carpet of the room is a mossy dark green and the whole space is full of plants. Shelves along the walls hold giant pots with lush dark vines cascading down, or crawling up the texture of the wallpaper. One of the wall shelves seems to have some sort of built-in water feature with a fountain falling down to offset bowls beneath it. There are trees intermittently throughout the space. They aren’t the fake plastic or small indoor plants Chihiro has seen in other restaurants. These are large sturdy trunks that shoot upwards to blend into an indistinct and weirdly high ceiling.

Chihiro is so busy staring around that she almost misses the other patrons. This room is mostly empty, but she does a double take at a group of women in the corner whose perfectly formed small eyebrows and abnormally large heads are strangely familiar. Chihiro is fairly certain she’s never met any of them before, but their clothing style is recognizable.

A young man in a kimono arrives a few minutes later to take her order. He doesn’t seem to find anything remarkable about Chihiro being seated in his section of the restaurant.

“I’m sorry if this is rude, but if I get something to eat, nothing...unusual will happen to me?” Chihiro asks. “I won’t be stuck here, or have to work off the debt of the food, or be turned into an animal or anything.”

The waiters face clears of confusion, “Oh, no, of course not. Well, as long as you pay your bill, but the prices are clearly printed on the menu. I know some other establishments can be a little prickly about those of us who look more human, but we’re not like that here. This is the big city so the management is more cosmopolitan about things.”

“Ah.” Chihiro looks back to her menu. “I’ll have the house special ramen, then.”

“Excellent, a very good choice.” He collects her menu. “You’ve picked good timing too, we’re about to be slammed. Your food should be out shortly, but I will warn you it might be a little noisy when the delegation of rivers arrives. They can never leave their politics behind at their meetings, it tends to spill into their dinner breaks.” He makes an apologetic face then turns from her table. Chihiro’s heart has shifted to double time, anticipation tightening her throat. Absently Chihiro cups her wrist to fiddle with her piece of amber, tracing mindless designs over her palm as she waits.

They start arriving before her food is ready. They drift in in twos and threes, some already in conversation, others silently perusing their menus. Chihiro doesn’t see anyone she recognizes. She earns a glance here or there, but most of them don’t pay her any attention. Haku, if he comes, would be older now. Chihiro has never considered how time might be different to a river, to a dragon, than to a man.

The bathhouse is locked in her mind to a particular time, a surreal vacation in her childhood, half fanciful dream, half memory. Chihiro herself has changed. She’s taller, her face a little narrower, her body with an adult woman’s curves. One of her front teeth has a small small chip from tripping spectacularly. She wears understated earrings and comfortable pumps and keeps her hair short. Chihiro thinks she would recognize herself, even if what she’d last seen was an old middle school photo, but it’s hard to be completely sure.

The arrival of her food distracts her. The soup is warm and rich and Chihiro takes a moment to close her eyes and breath in the steam. She opens them to the scrape from the chair across the table from her. She looks up.

“Chihiro,” Haku greets. “I like what you’ve done with your hair.”

“You too. Hi.” Chihiro blinks, “Do river dragons have to cut their hair?”

Haku looks like he’s been growing it out, hair neatly bound in a low ponytail and disappearing under the table.

“It’s just like this. It grows out normally I suppose, but if I didn’t want it this way it would just... be different.”

“Oh, neat.” Chihiro takes a spoonful of soup. “How are you? How have you been.”

She wasn’t even this awkward meeting new people at the conference.

“I’ve been alright, I went back to the sea for a while, since the river was filled in. I’ve been reviewing records for the Dragon King, so I’m here for the rivers’ gathering as an archivist.”

“Is that nice?”

“It’s boring and frustrating mostly, but that’s how any territorial discussion works. I make sure it's all well documented. Do you live in this city?”

“I’m here for a conference too, actually. Geosciences. I’m presenting a paper.”

“What is your paper on?” Haku asks, and Chihiro explains. After so many small talk conversations about her research, Chihiro is used to sifting genuine curiosity and enthusiasm from politeness and social nicety. Haku is honestly eager for her answers. It’s probably unsurprising for a river to have good questions about river pollution.

Chihiro’s soup goes cold as Haku distracts her with the details of her research and the intensity of his green eyes. It reminds her of the green of her grandmother’s amber and she absently fiddles with the necklace. Haku’s eyes follow her movement and sharpen.

“You didn’t have that necklace at the bathhouse.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t. It’s from the Kohaku River actually,” Chihiro finds herself blushing and looks down. “No, it was my grandmother’s, and her grandmother’s before her. It’s an old family piece.”

“May I see it?” Haku asks, holding out an open palm.

Chihiro reaches back to fumble the necklace clasp open. She drops the necklace into his palm. He closes one hand over the necklace as his other hand shoots out to grab her wrist.

Chihiro jerks back and feels his fingers like the sharp prick of talons against her skin. There’s a burning point of heat where her piece of amber on the bracelet is trapped under Haku’s thumb. He slowly turns his hand until the amber digging into her inner wrist winks from under his fingers in the light of the restaurant.

“Where did you get this one?” Haku asks.

“The day I almost drowned and you saved me, my cousin found it and gave it to me to make me feel better. Would you, ah, like to hold this one too?” she offers. She shakes her wrist very lightly from side to side so as not to jostle his fingers.

“Yes, please,” Haku asks.

He doesn’t let go of her wrist or move away as Chihiro leans forward to fiddle with the latch on the bracelet. When it’s free, Haku carefully lifts the stone away. The way he holds it is reverential.

“Can you tell me why they are important?” Chihiro asks after a minute or two of watching Haku stare at the pieces of amber.

“Dragons live longer than humans, but we do get old. Eventually we return to the sea for good and a new dragon becomes the river. The Kohaku River is a strange one. There were years it was empty, but it was still cared for. This was several dragon lifetimes ago. When the dragon who held the river before me returned to the sea, he told me this story.

The Kohaku River was once a dragon who fell in love with a mortal. The Dragon King said they could marry as long as the mortal never saw the dragon’s true form, or the dragon would have to return to the sea forever. But the couple were both wise, and very much in love, so she gave him her dragon pearl in the form of a piece of amber, for which the river was known. When given, a dragon pearl can grant a wish. Her husband wished to never see her true form and so they lived happily until the end of their days.

While she lived the river was cared for by the love that held her pearl, but when she died, the river was left barren and lifeless. A river should only ever have one pearl, so if it is lost or given away, that river dries up forever. But the Dragon King was so moved by how deeply this dragon and her husband had loved that he sent my ancestor with a new pearl to the river to restore it and bring prosperity to the people a dragon had loved so dearly she left the water forever. The dragons who came after her, we were never to lose or give away that pearl because the river could not be saved twice, and if the river dried, so too would the land and the amber. Only, I did. The new pearl was passed from dragon to dragon safely to me. But a little girl almost drowned and I was so distracted I lost my pearl.”

Haku looks up from where he’s been studying the piece of amber resting on his palm.

“When I lost my pearl I had to return to the sea, but I didn’t make it, and Yubaba stole my name. The same girl I saved came to the bathhouse and gave me my name back. So I was able to return to the sea, and I’ve been working as an archivist in the King’s library finding all the stories of dragons who lost or gave away the pearl of their river. I won’t be given a river to care for because I lost the Kohaku pearl, but then...” Haku rolls the honey glow of the amber between his fingers. In his hands both pieces of amber seem brighter, imbued with their own light. “You show up, Chihiro, with both dragon pearls of the Kohaku River.”

Chihiro blinks back tears. She turns slightly to wipe at her eyes but is sure the action is still obvious.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have them both at the bathhouse.”

“I didn’t know who I was then and I’m sure Yubaba would have tried to take them from you. Better that you didn’t.”

“So, they’re...yours, then?”

“I don’t know. None of the archives say anything about a dragon ever finding a lost pearl before.”

“What will you do?”

Haku looks at Chihiro speculatively. “May I take your grandmother’s pearl with me? I will need to speak with the Dragon King.”

“What about your pearl?”

“Give me a minute.”

Haku closes his eyes. Chihiro feels the hairs prickle up on her arms as an unnatural wind tugs hair out of Haku’s ponytail. A few moments later there’s a barely audible pop and the green amber is gone from within the encircling wire that had wrapped it tight and held it on the necklace for generations of Chihiro’s family.

“I’ll make sure that’s safely returned to the Dragon King. For the other, I’ll give it to you for safe keeping. You’ve kept it safe so far.” The air under his fingers shimmers, “There. Lean forward for me?”

Chihiro leans forward and Haku shifts into her space to secure what is now a necklace holding the golden dragon pearl behind her neck. When he’s done he leans back and Chihiro straightens up, hand automatically rising to fiddle with the necklace, familiar and strange at once.

“I’ll need to find you again, once I’ve spoken to the Dragon King,” Haku says. “May I see your hand?” Chihiro reaches out and Haku’s fingers curl carefully over her upturned palm. Chihiro feels a rhythmic thump-thump heartbeat from the amber at her throat. Haku lets go of her hand. “I’ve kept you from eating too long, let me order us something and you can tell me more about your research plans.”

Chihiro stays too late talking with Haku, but eventually even easy conversation and seemingly endless rounds of snacks and tea aren’t enough to keep her eyes open and she makes her bleary way to her accommodations. She sleeps through her alarm and misses the morning conference events but is still able to eat a hasty convenience store breakfast before finding the room for her mid-afternoon paper presentation. Her audience asks some decent questions, but none as good as Haku’s. She attends a few panels in the later afternoon, but finds that she isn’t retaining much of the information with her mind too unfocused as her fingers worry away at her new-old necklace.

\--

She’s collecting samples at her newest research site when a strong breeze rattles the foliage behind her. When she turns, Haku is waiting.

“What did the Dragon King say?” Chihiro asks.

“I’ll have my own river. The original Kohaku pearl has been kept well enough that it will serve. It may make for more difficult work, but he feels I’m up to the challenge.”

“What about the other?” Chihiro’s fingers find the amber at her throat.

“There’s never been a dragon with two pearls before. You can keep it for now.”

Chihiro frowns, “But-”

“There isn’t a river for me yet, and no one’s ever returned a lost or given pearl. I’ll give it to you for now.”

“If you’re sure.”

Haku nods firmly. “Are you done with your work here? We could go somewhere for dinner?”

Chihiro stops where she’s staying first to drop off specimens and change into cleaner clothes. Haku waits at the cafe Chihiro directed him to and she meets him there feeling more presentable and less grubby.

Over dinner Haku shares anecdotes of working in the dragon archives and Chihiro updates him on her new research. It’s not so long now before she’ll graduate. She’s made good connections between her internships and networking at conferences. Her favorite professor has been subtly suggesting that Chihiro look into further education and follow her passion to deeper research.

“What do you think you’re going to do?” Haku asks.

“That’s the problem – I don’t know. I’ve enjoyed doing research and I could find a career being with a restoration engineering company, but there aren’t very many of those. Just mitigating, guiding on how not to make things worse might not be enough? I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“Mm,” Haku gives an understanding nod.

“I don’t mind teaching but I don’t think that’s what I’d want to do. All the politics in being a professor… I’ve only seen a little of it, but that’s not what I want to do.”

“What do you want to do, then?”

“I want to make things better, to do the work and have an impact. To figure out how to fix things, and get my hands dirty cleaning, not just tell someone else how to do it and never be sure that it will get done, or done right.”

“Then look for someplace you can do that.”

Chihiro laughs, “It’s not that easy, but that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Haku leaves after dinner, promising he’ll be back. He doesn’t say when.

Sooner than Chihiro’s expecting, Haku stops by during a break between two of her final exams and sits with Chihiro on one of the campus benches. He’s brought the tea Chihiro mentioned liking, from the coffee shop nearest the main campus library. They talk about her exams and Haku shares another pearl-gifting story he’s found in the archives. This one ends with the dragon being seen in her true form by her husband and returning to the sea never to set foot on land again.

“Well that’s just depressing.”

“That’s the way of most of our pearl gifting stories, and those are rare enough as it is,” Haku shrugs. “Your family is an exception.”

“I’ve already seen your true form,” Chihiro points out. “Twice. What does that mean for us?”

“Well, I hadn’t given you the pearl at that time. I don’t know.”

“What if I want to see what you look like as a dragon again?” Chihiro muses. “Do you know, I dream about us flying sometimes. I would love to be able to do that, like you do.”

Haku’s eyes on her are thoughtful.

“That’s something most people never experience.”

Chihiro smiles. “I suppose you’re right, I’ve been quite lucky already, haven’t I?”

“Some would say so.”

“And what would you say?”

“I think you might be one of those people who makes their own luck.”

The bell on the clock tower starts ringing, signaling five minutes to Chihiro’s next exam. She doesn’t want to leave the bench and the small bubble of stillness where Haku is watching her, but she’s going to have to run if she doesn’t leave now.

“I have to go.” Chihiro stands.

“I’ll see you soon,” Haku promises, hand raised in farewell. When she looks back, the bench is empty.

She gets some giggling, probing comments from some of the girls in one of her classes about her boyfriend, and tries not to think about how answering them makes her stomach twist. It’s not that she isn’t aware of how attractive Haku is. From an older vantage point she can admit she’d had a bit of a crush, when she’d been younger. But everything at the bathhouse had been so strange, even if Haku was beautiful and calm and kind to her, any spark of interest was sidelined by the strangeness of the new world that had been around her.

Now, she can appreciate the way his sharp features accent a soft smile, the way the light glints from the sleek fall of his hair, the elegant curve of his hand on a paper coffee cup, or the intensity of his green eyes when she looks up to catch him staring. She dreams of flying, holding Haku close against herself, and the feeling is completely different from the exhilaration that she felt as a child. Remembering the dream partway through breakfast stains her cheeks red with a blush. But again, Haku hadn’t said when he’d be back. They had gone to dinner twice, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, so Chihiro focuses on the work that’s in front of her.

At first the thought of him is distracting, the two spontaneous visits leaving her hopefully turning at every gust of wind – but it’s never Haku. Chihiro spends a weekend baking and then takes the environmental club on a weekend tree-planting trip. She accepts a few tearful hugs and a thank you card, as she steps down from her role as club treasurer to focus on her last year of studies. The underclassmen somehow manage to bring a cake on the trip, but no plates, so they eat on napkins and Chihiro’s fingers get sticky-sweet with frosting. She promises to still bring them cookies even if she won’t be participating in as many club activities.

It’s strange to know this is her last year on campus. She has her favorite places, professors, classes, water fountains, and windows, but the brownstone walls around her are beginning to feel very small.

\--

Haku arrives a week after she presents her senior thesis. The days leading to graduation now seem to stretch empty and welcome in front of her, a sense of jubilation in her senior classes as the time ticks down to the end. She’s called her parents and they’ll be arriving for the graduation ceremonies. She’s started packing, gathering the life she’s created here into boxes and shipping it all to the next place.

Chihiro closes the box she’s been packing and opens the door at Haku’s knock.

“They said this was your room,” he explains when Chihiro stares at him for a minute.

“Right, yes, come in.” She steps aside and gestures to the desk with its single chair. There isn’t anywhere else to sit besides her bed in the small space. “Would you like some tea?” she offers.

“I would love some, thank you.” Haku nods and Chihiro turns on her electric kettle and gets down a mug and a teabag. She’s already packed her nicer teas, carefully wrapping the small clay teapot she drinks from most days in socks and burying it in the box of her winter bedding along with containers of tea leaves.

“You’ll have to come back to visit me when I’ve unpacked again,” Chihiro says when she hands over the tea. “Don’t judge me based on this cup.”

Haku’s fingers curl around the cup handle, catching Chihiro before she can fully release it into his grip.

“I’ll come back, if you want me to.” His eyes are warm on her cheeks. Chihiro steps back, turning to busy herself with her own cup.

“I would like that.”

“Where will you be going?” Haku asks, resting his elbows on her desk as he leans forward to watch her.

Chihiro sets her cup of tea aside and busies herself tidying on her small kitchen counter, then turns the movement into packing another of the open boxes by her bed with items from her kitchen drawer that she won’t be needing before she moves.

It’s easier to talk when she’s working, so she tells Haku about her new employers, the nonprofit organization she’s accepted a job offer from, and what she’s learned about the new place she’ll be living. She runs out of kitchen drawer before she’s run out of words, but now that she’s started, it’s easier to subside onto her bed and watch Haku as she tells him about the apartment she plans to rent and how long it will take to travel from her new home if she wants to visit her parents. Haku is a good listener and asks the kind of interesting questions that lead Chihiro to say more than she’d intended. The light in the room is turning the warm gold of late evening when Chihiro realizes.

“I’ve been talking this whole time; you haven’t told me anything about how you are,” she objects.

“Would you like to have dinner and I can tell you?”

“This will be the third time we’ve had dinner together,” Chihiro points out slowly. Haku nods with a slight smile. “Alright. What do you want to eat?”

At the restaurant, Haku tells Chihiro about assisting with river placements and training a new archivist.

“I thought you were getting the next available river?” Chihiro asks.

“Suiting the dragon to the river is still paramount, and dragons like to have a say in who succeeds them. Rivers come to match the temperament of their dragons so one might be a better fit than others.”

“Were none of them the right fit for you?”

Haku inclines his head forward. “There wasn’t anywhere that was right for me to settle yet.”

Chihiro frowns. “If you had a river, could you still come visit me?”

Haku pauses, sets down his chopsticks. “Dragons can still travel, for conferences, to spirit places, to negotiate agreements or share rain or consult with the Dragon King in the sea. But we never leave our river for long. I could visit, but it might not be very much.”

“I guess I’ll just have to be the one to visit you!”

Haku startles slightly, then smiles back, open and warm.

“I would like that,” he agrees.

\--

Chihiro’s parents take her out to dinner. Her mother’s eye makeup is a little smudged from where she’s been crying. Dinner feels too short after the hurry up and wait of the graduation ceremony, but her father is nodding off at the table so Chihiro hugs them each goodbye for the night. They meet the next day for brunch together before an afternoon of Chihiro showing them around campus before a final dinner of their trip.

Chihiro is teary too when they have to say goodbye and waves until long after her parents are out of sight in the taxi they take from the restaurant. She walks back to her now nearly-empty apartment and picks her way between boxes by streetlight to sit, exhausted and oddly lonely, at a desk in a room she’s never shared with anyone.

\--

Chihiro has fully unpacked in her new home by the time Haku finds her again. She’s coming back from buying groceries when he joins her on the walk back to her apartment.

“Would you like a hand?” he offers.

“Sure, thanks,” Chihiro offloads a bag. “Will you stay for tea? I made cookies.”

It’s after the dinner hour and Chihiro’s already eaten; never safe to shop on an empty stomach. Haku helps her put away the groceries, following her directions with only a few questions on where to put particular items. By the time they're done, the water is ready and Chihiro carefully prepares her favorite tea in its clay pot and puts out an assortment of her most recent baking projects.

“Thank you,” Haku accepts the cup she passes to him. Their fingers don’t touch this time, but he cradles the cup close in his hand and smiles at her. “I’ve spoken with the Dragon King,” Haku says after taking a sip. “You said once you wanted to see my true form again. Do you still?”

“Yes,” Chihiro breathes.

“And…” Haku leans towards her, the air between them strung with waiting. “I’m not wrong, am I, that there’s something between us here.”

“No, you’re not wrong.” Chihiro rises from the table, leaving her teacup behind. Haku stands to wait for her. She stops a hand's breadth from him and he sets his own cup down with a click. Haku presses a hand against her shoulder, keeping her from leaning up to meet him.

“The rules are still true. If I were to be with you as a human, you could not see my true form, or I would have to return to the sea.”

“Even though I’ve already seen you? That’s stupid,” Chihiro protests.

Haku’s face cracks in a grin, “I agree. And you’re right, this is unusual. Do you still have the second Kohaku pearl?” Chihiro nods, pulling the necklace out from under her shirt. “May I see it?”

Chihiro unclasps the necklace and carefully hands it over to Haku. He holds it in his open palm and blows on it gently. The piece of amber begins to take on a pulsing glow, seeming to grow bigger, eclipsing the wire binding it tight in a wash of light.

“Good, you haven’t said ‘I wish’. I’d like to share this pearl with you. In all the archives, no one has ever tried this, but I think if we share it, it won’t be given but it will be partly yours, so the Dragon King agreed he won’t compel me to return to the sea if we go flying. I don’t know what it will do, maybe nothing, maybe everything.”

Chihiro can feel the warmth of the stone glowing in the small space between them. Golden threads have started spiralling off the stone, reaching out and flicking along Chihiro’s hair, her finger tips and chin. Chihiro nods.

“May I kiss you?”

Haku’s hand is still keeping Chihiro grounded and held back so she nods twice before finding her voice and answering, “Yes, please,” into the hushed quiet between them.

She almost steps back when Haku brings his palm with the stone up between them, it seems to float off his palm to meet his lips. Chihiro watches him inhale, the light at once flooding into and emanating from his mouth. He leans down slowly, Chihiro has more than enough time to step away, but she doesn’t.

She leans up to meet him, pressing her lips softly to his. The feeling is one of fire and sweetness, heat searing her lips and burning honey on her tongue, almost painful, but behind that is the firmness of Haku’s lips, the soft brush of his hand against her cheek and his hair tangling her own fingertips as she reaches up to pull him closer.

She doesn’t want to let go as the initial rush of near-pain ebs down to a thrill and rush of heat entirely of her own. It feels like flying. She leans up into him, his arms close around her, hands finding the curves of her shoulder and hip. She can feel his thighs pressing against hers, the way they’re leaning together. She might fall down if he stepped away. His lips gentle against hers, drawing back to brush with exquisite tenderness leaving a somehow heavier promise of more. Chihiro pulls back with a gasp. Haku sways forward after her a moment before he grins, eyeteeth sharp as fangs in the flash of his smile.

“No one’s ever done that before.” Haku says.

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t invent kissing, so, the pearl?”

“Because it was already yours in a way, your lineage, I could share the pearl with you.”

“Does this mean we can go flying now?”

“Well, you’ve never made a wish on a pearl, I still have a river pearl, and this we now share between us. It isn’t given and it isn’t lost, we’re forging our own way. There’s nothing to stop us.”

Flying is a little different than Chihiro remembered. She’s bigger; Haku is bigger; they move so much faster this time. Bursting out of the low-lying clouds leaves water dappling Haku’s scales and dewed across Chihiro’s hair. Wind whips tears into her eyes and she can’t restrain a whoop of delight. Haku spirals around her, dipping and turning them but never leaving Chihiro feeling precarious or in fear of falling. It reminds her of dancing. Chihiro never wants it to end, but sooner than she’d like her teeth are chattering and Haku is smoothly spiraling back down to the ground.

They walk back from a neighborhood park to her apartment, passing through pools of streetlight in the gathered dark with joined hands between them. Chihiro doesn’t let go of Haku’s hand at her door. She has to reach across her body to wriggle out her keys and then fumbles the key in the lock once before looking away from Haku’s smile to successfully open the door and let them in. They stare at each other in her entryway.

“If I start tea, will you find a towel?” Haku asks, gently tugging his hand away. Chihiro agrees and releases him reluctantly to take off her shoes.

Chihiro changes into a dry, warm sweater and they both towel their hair dry while the tea steeps.

“What happens now?” Chihiro asks. “Are we dating?”

Haku ducks his head, smiling from under his wet hair, “If you would like to be, we are.”

“I’d like that.” Chihiro nods firmly. “Do you have a river of your own yet? What will that mean if I have to travel, or live elsewhere for work, or if you settle far away?”

“I don’t know.” Haku looks unconcerned. “We both can travel. If, if you want I will try for it to be somewhere near you.”

“But if we break up, then you’re stuck with that river.”

Haku laughs, “I don’t think any dragon ever feels stuck with their river. Even if it isn’t what you imagined, what you planned for, it becomes you and you it and you love it anyways.”

“I suppose that makes sense. But if you don’t have a river, will you have to leave again?”

“Yes. I will, but I’ll come back sooner. In a week, next Friday, I could take you to a movie?”

Chihiro stares for a long moment. “It’s a date?” she asks.

“It’s a date,” Haku confirms. “But now I should go. May I kiss you goodbye?”

Chihiro steps into him and raises her arms around his shoulders to pull him close. The kiss this time is light and gentle, no ethereal power pulsing between them, but warmth still pooling in her core all the same. She waves from the door and watches until Haku has disappeared up into the clouds before closing it and leaning back against it, staring into her empty apartment. She goes to find her day planner to block out an evening. She has a date.


End file.
